


kick off your shoes

by 99yeon



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: F/F, college sports au, collegiate shenanigans, ot12 college au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28574538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/99yeon/pseuds/99yeon
Summary: "I'm the captain. I run a tight ship here," Jungeun says. In the distance, a vending machine falls on Hyejoo.
Relationships: Choi Yerim | Choerry/Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye, Jeon Heejin/Kim Hyunjin, Jung Jinsol | Jinsoul/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip
Comments: 28
Kudos: 151





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> ships are tentative. no promises! and im keeping some things to myself  
> creds to The Gang For Inspiring This! i'm really excited to write this and i want to take a different format to this. maybe not so much a longform series but more a series of shorts? :) anyway enjoy this prologue

The night she receives the names of the other sprinters in the newly-established relay team, Jungeun doesn't slept a wink. 

It's not that they're strangers - all of them have vaguely faded in and out of college athletics in freshman and sophomore year, and in the process had garnered a general familiarity with each other. You tend to see the same faces over and over again in the gym and on the track. 

Kim Hyunjin is the one with a different girl on her arm every week. Choi Yerim managed to get on the dean's list of a college she didn't go to. Son Hyejoo ripped out the spout of a water fountain because her water had been tasting weird for a semester, and called 911 when she saw mold inside. (And later on, settled with the college for an undisclosed sum that had paid off her tuition fees.) 

Eventually, Jungeun decides that the thing keeping her up was the fact that the email, sent by the women's team manager Jo Haseul ( _Dr_ Jo Haseul, PhD), is missing something. There's the clear absence of an assigned team captain. 

Nevermind the fact that captains aren't ever assigned, and a 4x400 relay team hardly needs one. Jungeun cuts up four slips of paper, writes four names with her nicest fountain pen, places them in a Tupperware, and brought them to their first practice. 

As it turns out, choosing a captain is easier than she expected.

-

"Pass," Hyejoo says, trotting off to the vending machines for a snack instead. In time, Jungeun will learn that Hyejoo comes to practice with nothing but her phone and purse, and leaves with a mountain of snacks from the vending machines. "Have fun doing whatever it is, though." 

Hyunjin gives her a nonplussed look. "Can I go, too?" 

"Do you want to be captain?" 

"I, uh," Hyunjin's already looking past her, and Jungeun sighs. Deeply. "I don't do well with responsibility. Seeya!"

Jungeun groans and let her go, Hyunjin running off in no particular direction, with no particular destination in mind, leaving Yerim looking at her innocently.

"I'll be your vice-captain, Jungeun," she says gently, patting her on the arm, and that's how Jungeun becomes the relay team's captain. 

-

As their fastest runner, Hyunjin is the team's anchor. She runs the last leg of the race, and she is _really_ good at it. Jungeun comes up to her with the baton, Hyunjin snatches it, and she's off like a shot. She closes any gap her teammates left, and widens leads like no other. 

Hyunjin is good, and she knows it. Which is how they find out why exactly it is she can never stay with a girl for more than a week. It's not any player tendencies on her end. It's not the result of an overblown ego. 

It's just that Hyunjin really, _really_ likes running, and she sometimes forgets that others may not as much. 

"How's training holding up for you?" Yerim's asking Hyejoo, "I had to rush one of my essays last night, I was so tired." 

"Oh, I don't do any of my homework," Hyejoo shrugs, not picking up on the terrified look Yerim gives her. 

Jungeun raises an eyebrow. "Are you here on a sports scholarship?" 

"No," Hyejoo responds. "I just don't do any of my homework." 

"Wha-" Yerim's eyes widen as she looks past Hyejoo, "Oh my God, who is _that_?" Both Jungeun and Hyejoo turn around to see two girls. One of them is Hyunjin. Hyunjin is leading a blindfolded girl into the empty stadium and onto the track, chatting and laughing with her as if this isn't the strangest situation her teammates have ever seen. 

Total silence falls over the three of them as they watch Hyunjin take the girl by the shoulders and move her step by step, even as the girl giggles softly, "Where _are_ we? This place is so new!" 

"I promise it'll be good." 

"I've never had someone be this romantic with me," the girl coos, and Hyunjin grins, apparently not realizing that something is about to go horrifically wrong. 

"Okay, Yeji. You can take off the blindfold," Hyunjin announces. 

Yerim shuffles self-consciously to hide behind Jungeun, mumbling a _does she know we're here?!_ into Jungeun's shoulder. _I don't think she cares_ , Hyejoo mouths, because Hyunjin has made eye contact with her more than a few times since she came in. 

"Uh…" Yeji, with the blindfold (that really looks more like Hyunjin's old boarding school tie) now in her hands, blinks hard. She stares at the wide expanse of track, and then at Hyunjin, and then at Jungeun, Hyejoo and Yerim, who is trying her best not to be seen right now, having gotten the sense that she does not want to be associated with this. "Hyunjin." 

"No, no, watch. This is for you, babe!" Hyunjin calls cheerfully from the starting blocks. She doesn't ask Jungeun to time for her like she usually does. Instead, she huffs out, "On your mark…" and takes off when the imaginary pistol fires in her head. 

"Maybe she's just running one round to show you how fast she can run," Jungeun mumbles, suddenly wanting to hide behind someone as well. Even Hyejoo, with her hard-to-embarrass stature, is avoiding all contact, and squirming up closer to Jungeun and Yerim. 

Distantly, Jungeun thinks it's a shame her phone's in her locker. Because Yeji's facial expressions as Hyunjin passes them the first time (and doesn't stop), and as Hyunjin passes them a third time (and continues to not stop), are priceless. 

"I'm sure she has a great date planned for you," Jungeun tries to soothe. 

"She probably doesn't," Hyejoo grimaces.

"I should've listened to the rumours!" Yeji snaps, wiping tears from her eyes. "Everyone says the same thing about her. But I didn't listen!"  
  


Yeji leaves as Hyunjin's speeding past on her sixth round. It takes eight rounds, and Yerim and Jungeun standing in the middle of the track with their arms up by their sides, before Hyunjin finally comes to a panting stop and says, "I think that was my personal best."

"Your date left," Hyejoo says helpfully, and Hyunjin frowns. 

"But why?" asked in the most Hyunjin tone possible.

"Hyunjin," Jungeun says, trying to be diplomatic as possible while also trying to avoid pinching the bridge of her nose, "Do you bring all your dates here?" 

"Girls may not like it if you just bring them to an abandoned stadium," Yerim supplies, and Hyunjin hums thoughtfully. 

-

They do well as a team. Their lineup usually goes Hyejoo-Yerim-Jungeun-Hyunjin. It had been an exercise in humility to know that she's the slowest among all her teammates, but Jungeun placates herself with the knowledge that over a dozen sprinters in the college had been considered for the team. Even girls from the soccer team were vying for the spot. 

The 4x400 women's relay team is Dr Jo Haseul's pet project. She'd called Jungeun into her office one day and scared the living daylights out of Jungeun by impressing into her how _important_ it is that they win as many titles as possible. 

("I know the girls in this college are good, _good_ is not what I'm looking for, you know?" Haseul declares, smiling at some invisible person in the room, eyes shining, "What I'm looking for is sporting excellence. It's all I've ever looked for. And I think I've found it in the four of you. So, Captain, this is your ship now. Let's make it work!"

"Got it?" Haseul says, none too gently, the passion in her eyes blazing. 

"Yes ma'am," Jungeun stammers out, and Haseul pets her head and gives her a hard candy from her desk.) 

They've tried other formations, but the current one works the best. Switch-ups have led to episodes like 'Yerim-barfing-before-a-race-because-she-was-running-anchor'. They've found a good rhythm. They're good kids, all of them, because even if Hyejoo spends half her time at the vending machines and the other half pretending to be unaffected in the face of Yerim's blushing sweetness, when she gets into the zone, she's a wonderful athlete. 

Yerim, though she'd been a little jumpy and nervous at the start - she's a year younger than the rest of them, and an empathetic liberal arts major at that - had warmed up quickly. Jungeun wouldn't have expected Hyunjin and Hyejoo to be especially nice to, well, anyone, but they are. 

(Maybe they just don't respect Jungeun's poorly-enforced authority.) 

\- 

"Oh, one more thing," Jungeun says a few weeks later during their after-practice debrief, which is really her talking to Yerim while Hyejoo and Hyunjin pretend they're not using their phones. "This is important, so listen up. Dr Jo's transferring us to another training venue, next week onwards. She said we aren't being challenged enough here." 

Shouts of protest erupt immediately. 

"We're doing fine," Hyejoo interjects, "What stadium does she want to send us to, anyway?" 

"The biggest one she could squeeze us into. The Metropolitan Arena." 

"That place is fucking huge. How could this be a good idea?" Hyejoo demands, and Jungeun has to agree. The Metropolitan stretches out in every direction, has twelve different wings, and three food courts. The running track itself is known to be exquisite, though, which will be an upgrade from the hole-y ground they're currently training on. 

"I know," Jungeun grumbles, "I don't want to go either, but if Dr Jo thinks it'll improve our performance, it probably will. And we should listen to her." 

"And it'll be nice to get away from campus," Yerim says sweetly, "I'm sure public transport won't be choked up at all." 

-

The train suffers a record three breakdowns in one night the day they move to the new stadium, ushering in a new era for their team.


	2. i want it all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> since last chapter was pretty jungeun/hyunjin focused this chapter we turn the wheel over to hyerim and meet some other of the girls! excellent

Towels are multi-faceted essentials. They use them to cushion their elbows and knees from the asphalt when warming up, to dry off after practice ends, and most importantly, to whip at each other in the locker rooms. Hyejoo had suggested a towel-whip league of sorts. Whoever gets the most hits in stands to win a prize they haven't decided on, and whoever gets hit the most gets a punishment they haven't decided on either. 

Yerim had laughed and agreed to the idea, Hyunjin had latched on immediately, and Jungeun had agreed surprisingly quickly, given her stick-in-the-mud disposition. 

For all the upright zeal she carries herself with, Jungeun is too easily seduced by competition. 

("Say that I won!" Jungeun shouts down at Hyunjin, who she's sitting on, pinning her to the track. Hyejoo and Yerim are currently watching the altercation through the spaces between her fingers, making no attempt to save them from themselves. Instead, they've been trying to slide out of the arena, acting as if they don't know the two girls brawling on the ground - to be specific, Jungeun pinning Hyunjin down with her puny little self.

The story goes like this: Some of the members of the soccer team walked past just as Jungeun and Hyunjin came back from a warmup sprint, one that Jungeun finished first. Hyunjin can never resist the urge to cheese someone off. 

She'd turned to the girls walking past and pointed to herself, "I just won a race." 

She got a few 'good for you!'s from the girls who weren't really watching them anyway, a mysteriously special smile from one, and Jungeun, who'd been standing in earshot, raining the wrath of God down on her. The result had been a tussle that even Hyunjin seemed shocked by. She's a lot stronger than Jungeun, but that strength gives way to surprise, and eventually Jungeun sits on her and orders her to surrender.

"It wasn't a competition! We were warming up!" Hyunjin twists an arm out from Jungeun's grasp and futilely tries to push her off. "Christ, did you _grow_?" 

"Oh, it wasn't a competition?" Jungeun says softly, her voice deceptively sweet. Beside Hyejoo, Yerim shudders. That's the voice Jungeun uses before she screams at someone, when she _really_ wants to make a point. 

"We were warming up, of course it wasn't a competition!" 

"Then _WHY_ would you tell them you won? What did you win?" 

She's got a point. 

"Fine! Fine!" Hyunjin snaps, but she doesn't sound too threatening pinned under a girl who's literally three-quarters her size. Hyejoo's shoulders jump at the thought - is Jungeun actually stronger than she lets on? That wouldn't be good. "You won that race! Happy?"

  
"Good!" Jungeun fishes her phone from her pocket, "And now you're going to call Sooyoung from the soccer team and tell her that I won.") 

" _Yowza_!" comes a scream that is unmistakably Yerim's, and there are more screams as someone (she's guessing Hyunjin. Jungeun takes her time lathering after practice, and blocks out all external stimuli) chases Yerim around the locker room. Hyejoo would love nothing more to go in and join them, rack up a few points for herself for the towel-whip league, but there's a problem. 

Her towel is missing. She's looked high and low, but her prize towel has made a run for it. 

She looks around the corridor she's in again, before exhaling loudly through her nose and storming down the hallway. It's nighttime, which means that the Metropolitan is absolutely packed with other college athletes, which doesn't soothe Hyejoo's temper. The chatty girls from the college's softball team, the boys from the dragonboat squad, all have one thing in common: They have towels. She doesn't. 

She passes a vending machine offering towels, at a price greater than the sum of how much her last three meals cost, and wrinkles her nose at the thought of buying a new one. That would be conceding. That would be losing, and Hyejoo doesn't lose. 

"Hyejoo! _Hyejoo!_ " Yerim shrieks from inside the locker room, and Hyejoo growls to herself, punching in the numbers to get the towel. Five seconds and a non-insignificant deduction from her card later, she has a shrink-wrapped towel in her hands. She struggles with the shrink wrap too, and considers sinking her teeth into the plastic to get it out of its wrapping, but there are people walking past and she's not sure she wants to tarnish her name so fast. 

"You'd better be worth all this," she threatens her new towel, breaking into a full sprint to catch Hyunjin off-guard. 

(It's already worth it. She knows it the moment she enters the locker room, creeps up behind Hyunjin who's brandishing her towel like a fucking spear, makes eye contact with Yerim, and _CRACKS_ her towel across Hyunjin's butt so hard that the sound echoes - it was worth it.) 

"Time!" Jungeun calls, stepping out of the shower stall in a towel. There's still shampoo in her hair, and she has to keep blinking to keep it out of her eyes, but it doesn't seem to faze her. "Today's total whips gotten in is five for Hyunjin, three for Yerim - poor showing by the way Yerim, fight harder - and one for Hyejoo. Which brings our total up to…? Does anyone remember?" 

"It's okay," Jungeun says breathlessly, "I'll just add it to our Excel sheet, the one I emailed to all of you. Now, I need to go back in or I'm going blind." 

The three of them watch their captain go back into the shower, and listen to her complaining to herself about how the soap hurts her eyes, oh, how it hurts, rather melodramatically for a good minute or so. Jungeun doesn't seem to grasp that they can still hear her. 

"Business majors," Hyejoo and Hyunjin say exasperatedly in unison, while Yerim asks, "Why did she even come out of the shower?" 

-

Later. 

Hyejoo hasn't forgotten the loss of her towel. 

"I'm just glad you have a new one now," Jungeun comments, as the four of them head to the railway station. Hyunjin has her earphones in, but Hyejoo knows that she can hear every bit of the conversation - she's got sharp senses like that. "The other one - was it always grey?" 

Towel One was not always grey. It was white in Hyejoo's freshman year. Of high school.

"Maybe it's a good thing, is all I'm saying," Jungeun says hastily, and Hyejoo makes a rough noise of affirmation.

Their team's biweekly walks to the railway station - they're all usually here every day of the week, and relay team practice is thrice a week, but they're involved in other things and rarely leave at the same time, save for Hyejoo and Yerim who do all the same stuff - are usually quiet. Yerim's sunny disposition takes on more of a 'sunset' look, and she hardly talks on the way home, wiped from practice. (When they're in a group. When Yerim's alone with Hyejoo it's a little different.) Hyunjin leaves all her intense energy at the Metropolitan, and sometimes they don't even get a goodbye from her. It's just how she is. Only Jungeun makes paltry, barely-qualifying-for-conversation conversation, because she seems like she has to work the last drops of energy out of her system. 

It's nice, though. Just walking to the railway station in the cool night air, in the wake of another strenuous training session. More so now that a competition's coming up - not a big one by any means, but Haseul had made it extremely clear how they're expected to perform. That is, excellently. Hyejoo doesn't know if Haseul would swap them out if they underperform, but she's not keen to find out, because running is one of the few things she cares enough about to put effort in for.

Other groups of college athletes walk ahead or behind, at varying energy levels. Some are couples quietly enjoying each other's company - like the two girls in front of them who chat softly and have their hands intertwined. 

Hyejoo blinks, realizing that the girls in front of them are Hyunjin and a girl she recognizes from the college's long distance team. "What…"

"I give them a week," Jungeun snorts, before speeding up and veering away from Yerim and Hyejoo, "See you guys tomorrow." 

  
"Seeya!" Yerim chirps, waving at Jungeun as she catches up with a girl standing off by the side of the path. A cheerleader - her entire existence is sparkly, and she immediately pulls Jungeun into a big hug. Jungeun, to Hyejoo's immense surprise, hugs back. 

"Wow," Hyejoo finally says. She feels a little dazed. "Who's _that_?" 

"Jiwoo from cheer. She's my RA - she's really nice. She let me and Chaewon set off fireworks," Yerim responds, her eyes lingering on Jungeun and Jiwoo too. 

Hyejoo laughs. "And Chaewon is your…" 

"She's my roommate." Yerim cocks her head to the side, "She does hurdles too, won a few medals for it. You haven't seen her around?" 

Hyejoo searches the mental directory she keeps of people she knows. "Never heard of her." 

Yerim shrugs, "Oh, you should meet her, she's nice. So what happened was that we were stuck in school over winter break, and we were really sad about it, so Jiwoo brought in fireworks to cheer us up-" Yerim claps a hand over her mouth, and she tries to look nonchalant about her slip-up, but she's about as good at hiding her guilt as a puppy with its ears and tail down. "I meant Chaewon and I, um, we just walked out and found fireworks in a bush and we asked Jiwoo if we could light them on the quad." 

"Sure," Hyejoo responds, and her dry response evokes a mortified whine from Yerim, and her insisting that it's true. 

She looks a little more alive now that it's just the two of them, and Hyejoo doesn't doubt that it's some daunted feeling Yerim gets when the whole team's together. Yerim is naturally adaptable and agreeable, and when faced with strong personalities, a personality like hers can get intimidated. 

"Who knew Jungeun would be so affectionate?" Yerim muses aloud, watching Jungeun and Jiwoo ahead of them. 

"I knew."   
  


"You knew?" Yerim chuckles softly, slipping her hand into Hyejoo's. They're both cool from the sweat on their skin evaporating. Hyejoo comfortably pulls Yerim closer, the buttons on their coats clicking as they're drawn together. Yerim is touchy, and so is Hyejoo. It works. It makes Hyejoo feel happy, happy to the point where she has to turn away to hide her smile and muffle a dizzying feeling - maybe that shouldn't be happening. 

"Of course I knew," she says, a little arrogantly. "You can tell. Jungeun always tries her best with us, she gives us snacks and keeps the team notebook updated, and she always looks like she wants to hug Hyunjin but she doesn't want to overstep. She's waiting for the day we let her hug us." 

"...Woah," Yerim breathes out when Hyejoo's done talking, looking at Yerim worriedly in case Yerim thinks she's weird for pseudo-psychoanalyzing Jungeun. She _beams_. "How'd you pick up on all of that?" 

"I'm a people person," Hyejoo bares her teeth when she smiles, and Yerim laughs again, light. "And Jungeun is really easy to read." 

"Yeah, Jungeun's nice," Yerim hums. 

They walk in comfortable silence till they're right in front of the railway station. Yerim shivers a little when a gust of wind comes, and Hyejoo catches her trying to burrow deeper into the side of Hyejoo's coat. She ends up opening her coat up and wrapping Yerim in it, and they walk like that for a good distance. 

It's weird how Hyejoo's so damn _warm_ in this biting chill. 

"Hang on," she blurts out as they enter the station, Yerim stopping to take her gloves off so she can use her phone comfortably. "Do you say that about everyone? That they're nice?" 

"What?" Yerim blinks, "Everyone's nice, so I'll call them nice." 

"So what do you say if I asked you about Hyunjin?" Hyejoo asks. She doesn't know what she has to prove, but the need is there, some sudden desire to prove something to herself. 

"I'd say she's nice?" Yerim raises an eyebrow, arranging her gloves in her bag and zipping it shut. "What else can I say?" 

"And what do you say about me?" 

It comes out more of a challenge than Hyejoo intended. She sounds intense when she doesn't mean it, serious when she isn't, imposing when she doesn't want to be, but the thing about Yerim is that she doesn't get affected by things like that. In the good three months since they started track practice, Yerim has taken Hyejoo at her worst, three times a week, and even before that, when they did the 400 metre event in freshman year. 

But this isn't Hyejoo at her worst. This is… weird. Even time in the subway station seems to have stopped, as if to land the spotlight on her and her big mouth. 

"You're different, obviously," Yerim says smoothly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She loops her bag back over her shoulder and links elbows with Hyejoo, starting to walk into the station. "I tell them you're Hyejoo, and they just know." 

Hyejoo snorts, "How does that tell them _anything_?" 

"How does it not?" Yerim tosses back whimsically. 

"That doesn't make sense," Hyejoo grumbles as they continue to walk. They tap their metro cards, head down to the platform, once again in that comfortable silence, all the way back to the station servicing the college, where they get off and eventually part ways when they get to Hyejoo's residential hall. 

Hyejoo doesn't think much about how Yerim tries to hold her hand the whole time. She thinks more about the fact that she lets her. 

-

Tonight, Hyejoo falls asleep the moment her head hits the pillow, wiped from practice and the stress she'd given herself at the railway station over Yerim. The lights will still be on when she wakes up. 

Across campus, Yerim stays awake late into the night, still unable to fall asleep even after she takes a long, hot shower. She ends up talking to her roommate Chaewon, who may or may not be asleep for a good portion of it. 

Hyunjin doesn't sleep in her own room tonight. Instead, she's in Jungeun's residential hall, with someone else. 

And Jungeun? Tonight, in the pursuit of love, Jungeun falls from her dorm balcony (on the first floor, don't worry) into a ditch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope this chapter gives an idea of how i intend to pace this fic... everythig will come in time <3 next chapter onwards i promise: less character study-ish vibes more PLOT more VIBES leave a comment thank u for reading lmk how you like the way this is written <3

**Author's Note:**

> twt @9dalso hmu if you have ideas for college track au!loona because this au is far from concrete


End file.
